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Throwback Thursday: Harmony Korine Before He Went on Spring Break

The "Spring Breakers" helmer's days of being an "It Kid" with girlfriend Chloe Sevigny are gone but not forgotten.

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March 14, 2013

by

Erin Weinger

By Friday, the Spring Breakers L.A. premiere will have come and gone. But before filmmaker Harmony Korine rubbed elbows with the biggest tweens in the game, he was a bona fide Indie It kid, creating controversial cult classics Gummo and Kids, writing songs for Bjork and producing fine-art photo exhibits with artist Christopher Wool. And he was also dating original '90s cool girl Chloe Sevigny, whom he encountered during a chance meeting in New York City's Washington Square Park in 1993.

Two years later, she was cast as HIV-positive Jennie in Kids, Korine's NC-17 effort that launched both of their careers. And the couple remained an on-again, off-again for the next six years, working together on 1997's Gummo (Korine made his directorial debut; Sevigny designed the costumes) and, as the photo at left shows, attending the Vanity Fair Oscars party in 2000. Sevigny was nominated for best supporting actress for her role in Boys Don't Cry, and she dazzled on the red carpet in a sweeping black halter YSL gownpaired with stacks of gold bangles and a leather jacket that wouldn't become standard formalwear juxtaposition for years. And Korine was her trusty companion, despite being addicted to heroin at the time.

Today, Korine's act is cleaned up and his latest (and most mainstream) film debuts in limited release on March 22. Ironically, the 40-year-old filmmaker wrote Spring Breakers as homage to all the debauchery-filled trips he missed in his own youth, when he was busy being way too cool for school.